There’s a lot to like about modern cars, but there’s one major design aspect that still leaves much to be desired about many of the vehicles making their way off the showroom floor right now.
Cars have come a long way over the past century and there are a lot of great things about new models that we often take for granted, from power steering and air conditioning to three-point seatbelts, airbags, and anti-lock brakes.
Nevertheless, one area that carmakers are consistently fumbling with concerns the infotainment screens that now adorn our dashboards.
Touchscreens have become an expectation in any new car we purchase, but there are a few key aspects that separate a good infotainment system from a bad one.
Convenience is the name of the game
The central theme behind a good infotainment screen is that it should be simple and convenient to use.
What this means in practice is that a person should be able to perform most tasks with only one or two inputs, especially since certain actions may be done whilst driving.
One of the most obvious ways to achieve this is to include physical buttons for key functions such as air conditioning, but this is something that several automakers are seemingly reluctant to do.
The aircon is something that we all continuously fiddle with throughout a journey, often making small increments to the temperature and the fan speed as we move along.
Even with automatic climate control, which is meant to self-correct and maintain a certain temperature, it’s still nice to be able to turn down the fan speed or adjust the temperature once the current settings get uncomfortable, which is why it’s frustrating when these inputs are relegated to the touchscreen.
Physical buttons mean these simple inputs can be left up to muscle memory, but moving it to the touchscreen turns one motion into a multi-step process that has you looking away from the road for several seconds.
Buttons are especially useful for off-road vehicles, too, as touchscreens are difficult to interact with over bumpy terrain.
Certain companies at least include a dedicated section of the screen for the AC, but others will put it in a sub-menu, making the whole process rather tedious.
The VW Amarok (left) does not have physical AC controls, while the Ford Ranger (right) does.
This brings up the more general problem with user interfaces (UIs) and sub-menus, which should be easy to read and intuitive to navigate.
A lot of displays have cluttered UIs from trying to cram as much information on-screen at all times, which is especially true of cars that don’t have a separate instrument cluster such as the recent Mini and Volvo models.
Some vehicles get around this with a (usually optional) heads-up display, but the central touchscreen still has a lot of info making it difficult to check smaller details at a glance.
The UI must also be simple to navigate by minimizing the number of sub-menus owners need to jump through to access certain functions.
While this isn’t a problem for rarely-touched actions like checking the car’s diagnostics, functions like heated seats or the advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) can be annoying to activate and adjust if you have to jump through a series of convoluted menus to do so.
While these things can all seem rather trivial at first, a car is something you’ll be spending dozens of hours in, so every needlessly complicated process will quickly add up over the long run.
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